30-day challenge

Gah, this one again. I find goals so hard to write about, not because I don’t have any, just because they are so mundane. Throughout my 20s and 30s I worked hard to lift myself out of some fairly difficult circumstances – two kids at 19, no high school eduration, divorce, addiction. My goals were lofty and I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to achieve them. I sobered up, went back to school and got a Masters degree, the kids grew into sensible, well-adjusted adults. I got a great job, and then another great job. I married a wonderful man, purchased a home, went on several overseas trips. Became a grandmother. I have a great life.

I feel like I’m on the right trajectory now, the ship is self-piloting. All I need to do is make small course adjustments here and there.

So how do I set goals when life is just as I want it? Last year I said this:

If my goals were to be things that I knew I could achieve in the coming year (i.e. things I know that I will actually do), they would go something like this:

1. Buy all the Apple-y things

2. Go to the gym a lot

3. Spend a lot of time at the ice rink – playing hockey and supporting others

4. Spend lots of quality time with my beautiful children and grandchildren

6. Try and carve out space for relaxation but not really succeed, realise that relaxation is not really my thing

My goals for 2017 are not dissimilar. I suspect 2017 will involve less ice hockey than previous years, since we have a good crew sharing the league admin workload, and Wyatt and Arlia aren’t playing. On the travel agenda are Kaikoura, Auckland, Napier, Bluff, Brunner, and probably Wellington and Dunedin at some point.

My biggest goal is to work on some home improvement. We’ve spent the past few years using our extra money for overseas trips, and have made a decision to stay home this year and do some renovating instead – our bathroom and laundry need an upgrade.

Here are two photos – pre and post gym workout. That’s the RPM instructor in the background.

And here is how my day unfolded…

I woke up at 7.30am, got up at 8.30am, had a delicious pancake breakfast then settled in for some hockey admin and TV watching – Netflix FTW!

At about 12pm, I had a shower and then did some organising for camping tomorrow and some other tidying things. The cleaner was due at 2pm, so we wandered off down to Re:Start Mall for some lunch – dumplings for me and pizza for Stephen.

We came back to a delightfully clean house, watched some more TV, and then I went to the gym, to the supermarket and home for dinner.

When I pack a bag to leave the house I make sure I have my phone, watch, wallet, headphones, sunglasses and battery pack. These are my essentials. Number 1 is probably my phone.
Note, no keys. Our front door and car locks are digital so I often have no keys with me. For the most part I can also manage without bank cards now that I have Apple Pay.

I can think of a couple of things that maybe people don’t know about me:

I am a chubby-bunny champ – I have a talent for shoving marshmallows in my face. I have quite a large mouth. I can get more than 20 marshmallows in my mouth at once.

I can fit a lot of activity into a small amount of time. I am a well-organised person (most people know this) and this gives me the ability to jigsaw activities together in a way that maximises output/time.

I don’t have any. I truly believe that my life is as it should be – I can’t regret the past, it’s what got me here. And since I love my life, it’s hard to think about anything that has happened as regretful.

On a small scale, I sometimes regret a misspoken word or an action, but those things are easily remedied with a quick apology – no need to regret something if you clear it up as quickly as you can and are able to move on.

It’s hard to know what my worse habit is, so I phoned a friend for this one…

Stephen says “always needing to be right” is my worst habit – but that’s not really a habit, it’s more of a character flaw. Luckily, he’s not able to pin-point any particularly bad habits. The worst Stephen can come up with is that I move his stuff around so he can’t find it later, something that I call “tidying up”.

I have a lot of habits, but I’m not sure I can say that any of them are bad, so it’s hard to find the worst one. I’d probably say it’s interrupting and not letting other people finish speaking. Sometimes I physically put my hand over my mouth to stop myself from doing this.

I dunno, the usual things – death, loss, things not working out as I hoped.

I am generally an upbeat and positive person, so I don’t really dwell in sadness. I wholeheartedly believe that everything is just as it should be – that I’m exactly where I need to be doing just what I should. And when life feels hard and the going is tough, I know that everything comes to an end eventually and I just need to ride it out.